Gov. Rick Scott's push to revamp Everglades restoration faces new cost concerns as well as questions about potential delays in already overdue help needed for Florida's famed River of Grass.

Scott in October surprised the environmental community by flying to Washington, D.C., in a bid to redirect the slow-moving state and federal plan to restore the Everglades.

The new plan calls for focusing on using existing state land to try to cut costs in a push to build a core group of reservoirs and treatment areas to clean stormwater to help replenish the Everglades.

It's also intended to resolve litigation over Florida's failure to meet water-quality standards without the state paying as much as $1.5 billion under a federal Everglades restoration plan.

But state officials said Thursday that changing course would take another 18 months of planning and could include new costs for the South Florida Water Management District.

The district, which leads Everglades restoration for Florida, saw its current budget slashed by 30 percent by the Legislature at Scott's urging.

The state and federal governments are supposed to share the costs of Everglades restoration, but district officials Thursday questioned whether Congress would deliver.

"I'm concerned how much that is going to cost and where that money is going to come from," district board member James Moran said. "Any new cost is outside our means at this point."

The Everglades proposal faces a key hurdle Jan. 27, when state officials return to Washington to try to convince federal officials to support moving ahead with the new approach.

The district contends it would take six months just to come up with the proposed price tag for the mix of reservoirs, filter-marsh treatment areas and other improvements to be positioned between Lake Okeechobee and Everglades National Park.

Construction likely would not start this year, as once hoped.

"Plan, meeting, plan. I've been coming to (meetings) for eight years," said Newton Cook, of United Water Fowlers, who questioned the need for more delays.

Other environmental advocates have said they are encouraged by Scott's attempt at getting Everglade restoration back on track.

"This is just speeding things up," said Jane Graham of Audubon of Florida. "This will help reverse ecological decline."

At the urging of a federal judge fed up with Florida's failure to meet water quality standards, the Environmental Protection Agency has called for Florida to almost double the 50,000 acres of man-made filter marshes that use aquatic plants to absorb polluting phosphorus washing off agricultural land and development to the north.

Scott's approach seeks a more modest expansion of treatment areas while also building new water- storage areas nearby to try to more effectively clean up stormwater that could be redirected to the Everglades.

The new proposal also would extend the already-delayed 2016 deadline for achieving water quality standards to 2022.

Lack of federal funding, legal fights and shifting state priorities have combined to bog down restoration.